The inaugural Craig Wasserman '86/ Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz corporate law breakfast program for alumni was held in New York City on October 17, 2013.

Endowed by the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and the Yale partners of the firm in memory of their colleague, Craig Wasserman ’86, the breakfast programs, sponsored by the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law, feature panel discussions on current topics in business law by members of the bar, business and investment communities, public officials and faculty. The inaugural breakfast, on “Capital Markets in the 21st Century: Will the U.S. Still Be on Top?,” consisted of a panel discussion led by the Honorable Leo Strine, Jr., Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, Steven A. Rosenblum ’82, of Wachtell, Lipton and Roberta Romano ’80, Center Director and Sterling Professor of Law. Yale Law School Dean Robert Post ’77 moderated. Along with Dean Post, Steve Rosenblum delivered remarks honoring Craig Wasserman at the start of the program, and his wife, Marla Wasserman, mother, Sandra Wasserman, and sister, Debra Wasserman Glasser were present.

Craig Wasserman (1960-2010) was one of the nation’s leading deals attorneys. A partner at Wachtell, Lipton, he specialized in the financial institutions practice of the corporate group. He was an original member and active participant on the Corporate Law Center’s Board of Advisors. In addition to his work on the Center’s Board, he established the Law School’s Bert W. Wasserman Workshop in Law and Finance in memory of his father.

Steve Rosenblum’s remarks on the occasion of the inaugural breakfast convey a sense of what made Craig Wasserman an outstanding lawyer and special individual: “Craig had a great ability from the start to apply the world of legal ideas to the world of practical applications. Beyond Craig’s legal skills, he also had the ability to connect with people, both within and outside the firm. On the business side, his ability to instill complete trust and confidence in clients was obviously a huge asset in building our financial institutions practice. But it was his care for people within the firm that made him such a wonderful partner to us and a mentor to the younger lawyers in the firm.”

“In practice, as in school, Craig was an intellectual omnivore, whose economic acumen and insatiable curiosity made him a creative and effective advocate,” said Dean Post in the opening remarks at the breakfast. “When endowing the Bert W. Wasserman Workshop, Craig wrote that his father was ‘a distinguished leader’ who exemplified his ‘field’s highest professional and ethical standards,’” Post said, continuing, “I am reminded of these words now because the same could be said for Craig. He was not only a masterfully skilled lawyer, but also a principled and reflective one, who never gave up his habit of asking questions about how his practice related to the world around it. He believed deeply that practitioners and academics both had something to learn from one another.”

“Craig was a fount of ideas, with unbounded enthusiasm for what the Center was trying to accomplish and how we could do it better,” said Romano. “He was especially concerned about strengthening ties between the Law School and its graduates. In that regard, he was an avid proponent of the alumni breakfast program, and was intimately involved in planning a number of programs, so it is especially appropriate that the breakfast series has been named in his honor by the generosity of his colleagues at Wachtell, Lipton.”